Heads are buzzing from green noise

Two years after "An Inconvenient Truth" helped unleash a new tide of environmental activism, green noise pulses through the collective consciousness from all directions.

ALEX WILLIAMS

Despite the expense and the occasional back strain, Mary Burnham, a public relations consultant in San Francisco, felt good about the decision she made a few years ago to buy milk — organic, of course — only in heavy, reusable glass bottles. For the sake of the environment, she dutifully lugged them back and forth from the grocery store every week. Cutting out disposable paper cartons, she reasoned, meant saving trees and reducing waste.

Or not. A friend, also a committed environmentalist, recently started questioning her good deed. "His argument was that paper cartons are compostable and lightweight and use less energy and water than the heavy bottles, which must be transported back to a plant to be cleaned and reused," she says. "I have no idea which is better, or how to find out."

Burnham, 35, recycles religiously, orders weekly from a community-supported farm, buys eco-friendly cleaning products and carries groceries in a canvas bag. But she admits to information overload on the environment — from friends, advice columns, news media, even government-issued reports. Much of the advice is conflicting.

"To say that you are confused and a little fed up with the often contradictory messages out there on how to live lightly on the earth is definitely not cool," she says in an e-mail message. "But, heck, I'll come out and say it. I'm a little overwhelmed."

She is, in other words, a victim of "green noise" — static caused by urgent, sometimes vexing or even contradictory information played at too high a volume for too long. Two years after "An Inconvenient Truth" helped unleash a new tide of environmental activism, green noise pulses through the collective consciousness from all directions. The news media issues dire reports about disappearing polar bears; Web sites feature Brad Pitt arriving at a movie premiere in his hydrogen-powered BMW; bookstore shelves are piled high with titles like "50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth"; shops carry hemp-enriched shampoo and 100-percent organic cotton tampons.

An environmentally conscientious consumer is left to wonder: Are low-energy compact fluorescent bulbs better than standard incandescents, even if they contain traces of mercury? Which salad is more earth-friendly, the one made with organic mixed greens trucked from thousands of miles away, or the one with lettuce raised on nearby industrial farms? Should they support nuclear power as a clean alternative to coal?

If even well-intentioned activists are feeling overwhelmed, the average SUV driver must be tuning out. And some environmentalists fear that the public might begin to ignore their message before any meaningful change can be accomplished. For them, it's a time to reassess strategies and streamline their campaigns before it's too late.

"We worry about it," says Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. "We all understand that today's media environment is an extremely crowded one, and message overload is the order of the day."

A study by the Shelton Group, an advertising agency and market research company based in Knoxville, Tenn., that focuses on environmental products, showed that consumers surveyed in 2007 were between 22 and 55 percent less likely to buy a wide range of green products than in 2006. The slipping economy had an effect, but message overload appeared to be a major factor as well, says Suzanne C. Shelton, the company's president.

"What we've been seeing in focus groups is a real green backlash," Shelton says. Over the last six months, she adds, when the agency screened environmentally themed advertisements, "we see over half the room roll their eyes: 'Not another green message.'"

Jen Boulden, a founder of idealbite.com, which sends e-mail messages to its readers with daily tips about eco-friendly living, says that "every conversation I have on the professional level is, 'If people are going to get green fatigue, we don't want to become irrelevant.'"

Meanwhile, environmentally conscientious citizens, she says, "Come in and say, 'Just tell me what I need to know, just give me the cheat sheet.'"

The need to simplify the green message has become obvious, she says, especially after the argument over Nalgene bottles, which are made of a strong, reusable plastic. As recently as last summer, the bottles, marketed to sports enthusiasts, were hailed as an alternative to disposable water bottles, which environmentalists say waste petroleum, both in their manufacture and their transport.

But some environmental groups and scientists raised concerns that polycarbonate plastic, used in the manufacture of some Nalgene bottles, baby bottles and the linings of tin cans, can leach bisphenol-a, an endocrine-disrupting chemical.

Environmentalists and consumer health advocates debated the question — to Nalgene or not to Nalgene — seemingly endlessly. (While the company points to studies that indicate the products are safe, in April it announced plans to phase out products made from the compound.)

Bottled water is not the only issue people find increasingly confounding. "I would be a much more productive member of society if I didn't have to worry about, 'Should I wash dishes by hand or run the dishwasher?'" says Erik Michaels-Ober, a 24-year-old software engineer in San Francisco. "There are all sorts of conflicting stories about that."

In response to the confusion, the Natural Resources Defense Council last year unveiled Simple Steps, a how-to campaign that broke up advice into three tiers, according to the interest and commitment level of its audience.

People logging onto simplesteps.org can select the depth of information they desire on the basis of whether they want to spend a minute, a morning or a month adopting green habits, says Phil Gutis, the organization's communications director.

Leaders of Greenpeace also decided to help its audience prioritize environmental concerns, says Kate Smolski, a senior legislative coordinator. So instead of asking people to juggle disparate concerns — including nuclear waste, coal pollution, deforestation and ocean wildlife endangerment — the group now tries to bundle them under the umbrella of climate change.

So now, when the group campaigns against nuclear energy, it labels reactors a "false solution" to global warming. When the group talks about deforestation, the focus is on its contribution to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

"It's very helpful," Smolski says, "to show that it's all connected." It may also be helpful to teach patience. Climate change will take several generations to combat, and there will never be a single moment when society can declare "mission accomplished," says Paul Hawken, an environmentalist and author. "There are no watershed moments in the environment. It's a century-long process."

A scary prospect, given that, as Hawken said, "even people inside the movement have the same feeling — burnout."